Organic nonlinear optical (NLO) materials offer great potential for use in integrated optical devices. NLO thin-film materials have been fabricated by Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) techniques, molecular self-assembly, and electric field poling of functional polymers. The critical issue, however, remains the stability of the acentric alignment of the NLO chromophores.
Kelderman et al., (Adv. Mater. Vol. 5, 925 (1993)) have recently reported the study of poled neat calixarene films and calixarene-doped polymeric films for second-order nonlinear optics. They showed that "cone" conformation calix[4]arene chromophores exhibit large values of the second-order nonlinear susceptibility d.sub.33 (6-11 pm/V at 30-60% wt) with a high degree of orientation.
An object of the present invention is to fix chromophore orientation at the molecular level by structural interlocking of dipolar molecules into cone-shaped supermolecules, and then to use these to build polar self-assembled monolayers.